Disappointed. That sums up my feeling about the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead. In fact, it was one of the most boring episodes I have watched this season. The episode couldn’t keep my eyes glued to the screen for more than a minute.

In fact, if this particular episode had had more action, and not just focused an entire episode on one person, it would have grabbed my interest more.  But it’s more than just that. The Walking Dead has become more of an emotional show rather than a thriller these days, dealing far more with kidnappings and deaths of heroes at the hands of other survivors than what we really want to see: zombies.

Instead, this show has become more talk-talk-talk, make negotiations with evil survivors, then talk-talk-talk-some-more show. Really? If I wanted to watch people argue and negotiate problems then I would just turn on the evening news.

In the beginning of the series, you felt like you were in a different world– a post-apocalyptic one– where one could watch and imagine what you would do in difficult but totally fictitious circumstances.

But now the show is almost as close as it can get to real life, and I’m faced with watching disagreements and circumstances I might see at school, or at least when I turn on CNN. I don’t like how the show is leaving out The Walkers, which is what the whole show used to be about and what really drew me to it in the first place. Bring back the zombies!

I have also been noticing that newer episodes are running ten minutes longer than what they used to. I noticed realized this because I kept looking at the clock asking myself, “When is this episode going to be over?” Not an effect the producers were hoping for, I’m sure.

On the plus side, I was intrigued by the first five minutes of the premiere. The previous episode had left viewers wondering who the man in the dark combat boots was, and the start of the premiere revealed his identity along with Gabriel putting all of the Alexandria colony’s food and supplies into tubs and leaving the town with the man in the combat boots. Yes, that little revealing moment temporarily grabbed my attention. However, after the show cut to commercial I lost interest because they never showed us where Gabriel and the man were driving off to.  

Overall, The Walking Dead is still a good show, and I’m not likely to stop watching it as long as my family watches it every Sunday. But I can’t help feeling that the show is evolving into more of a real-world survival show than a zombie show.  I understand that Rick wants to rise up against bad guy Negan and have other groups help him, but the whole show is just turning  into an emotional catastrophe.

Earlier seasons of the The Walking Dead focused more on getting from point A to point B without getting bitten, let alone dying. It gave me that “Oh no, he’s gonna die!” effect that kept me on the edge of my seat. Now that feeling is mostly gone.

If The Walking Dead continues down its present path, I might actually have to consider pulling the plug. Producers, if you’re reading this: Give me back my zombies.